The Week-end

Sunday moning, we got up and got ready to head farther north. Aron of The Shekel had lined us up a last-minute scuba charter out of Alpena, Michigan and we weregoing to get some diving in, hence the scuba tanks in my aircraft's cargo compartment. We were going to load Aaron's gear in too and head up, but the weather forced us to resort to Plan B. We drove. So after a quick lunch at Aaron's place while his two darling girls sang us songs about Barney the dinosaur (and killing him with TNT and a 2x4...those kids are great!), we hit the highway for the great north.

Now these road trips that we take from time to time are always fun if only for the adventure of the open road. I like to drive and see places. But traveling with Aaron is more like The Call of the Mild, at least when he's driving. He never speeds, never passes on the double yellow line (and rarely even on the broken white ones), and won't even drive to the corner store without programing his GPS first then following it's instructions to the letter. (I am militantly anti-GPS in car, just FYI. I'm old and I love paper maps. (If it was good enough for Columbus...) Besides, the travel is half the fun, and getting off-track just means more travel and more new sights to see.

Finally we got to Alpena, A fair bit under our projected arrivial time because I drove the last part of the way. We got to a pretty decent little motel that Aaron found, The Dew Drop Inn. Now knowing how Aaron shops for motels from past trips ("It was the cheapest place I could find!"), I was expecting it to be right next to a paper mill or a rendering plant and have doors that look like they've been bashed in a time or two by the local police tactical units, but this one was actually quiet and clean and I didn't even smell curry when we walked into the office. It turned out to be a really nice place for the money. So after dinner at the John Lau Saloon, a local pub that was out of hamburgers(!) but sold 32oz beers(!!), we adjourned to our pretty decent little room and called it a night.

Monday morning came early, and we grabbed a kick but good breakfast at John Boy's Restaurant, where the waitress and customers at the counter were talking positively and even enthusiastically about "stand your ground" laws as we walked in. That told us right there that we were back up in God's Red-State America.

Then it was off to the boat dock, where the adventure really began.

First off, we got there and there was...nobody. No boat, no other divers, no captain. Just two guys going "WTF?" So Aaron calls the captain and I'm thinking that he actually woke the guy up. Then the captain is asking: "Who are you guys, again?" Not a good sign.
Next, he tells us that the weather is bad and he canceled the other divers last night but forgot to call us. However, he's still willing to take us out to the agreed-upon wreck if we want to go.

Dude, we're all the freaking way up here. We pretty much have to go now. So he promised to hurry up and get over to us, and forty-five minutes later, here comes a little 18-foot outboard piloted by this guy's twin in every way except thhe eye patch:

It's Captain Ron Mike!

"Well guys, it's pretty choppy out there," he says. "What do you think?"
We're thinking that he's the captain, so if he doesn't think it's safe, he won't take us out. We're game to try the dive based on his willingness to take us out, so we toss our gear onto the SS Minnow's little brother and head out onto Lake Huron.

We go out, and we get into the waves, and it's up and down, up snd down, with tons of spray and water splashing over us. A little farther out, we saw a 1000-foot lake freighter heading north, and he was actually taking spray and rollers completely over his bow, and he was empty and riding high out of the water! Yeah, maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

Finally we get right to the wreck sight, and the boat is riding up and down six to eight foot waves, many of which now have whitecaps. Captain Ron Mike pronounces it unsafe to dive, saying "I should have listened to my instincts back at the dock." I look at my soaking wet dive partner and we exchange incredulous looks. But Captain Ron Mike just fires up the boat and says "I now a couple more wrecks that are better protected." And off we go again.

Some time later, we finally get to a bouy marked "Davidson" and Captain Ron Mike tells us that there's "wreckage all over the place" below us. We get geared up and go over the side, and drop down to find one small section of wood hull and not much else. We horse around there anyyway for a while, but then I start getting a sharp pressure in my forehead that feels like someone is shoving an ice pick through my skull. At first I'm thinking that something's twisted on my mask or my hood, so I spend some time removing my mask and reseating it, but when that didn't work, I had to surface to try to fix it. Once on top, it was actually worse, not better, so I swam back to the dive boat and took a breather on the ladder for a few minutes. When it still didn't go away, I climbed back aboad and reluctantly decided that I was done for the day. I was pissed beyond words to say the least, but a trifle concerened too, as I've never experienced this sort of pain before, and to get it suddenly on a dive is not good. So Aaron came back aboard too, and Captain Ron Mike took us ashore at a marina well south of the one that we departed from annd we all took a cab back to our car and his truck. (Apparently Captain Ron Mike didn't want to try to run his boat back through that chop either.) But at least Captain Ron Mike had brought beer with him, so we drank some of that and then hit the road back south. Holiday traffic was a mess on I-75 south, so we got off the highway and took county roads most of the way back down. The headache was still with me so I even let Aaron drive part of the way and he actually passed a couple of cars at one point. I was so proud of him!

We mae it back and finished the night with a nice dinner with Proud Hillbilly's daughter and Son-in-law, as they now live in this area. Good times, and worth doing just for the adventure even if the dive excursion did turn out to be a horrorshow. And there's always the next time.

Big brass ones

OK< if I still had heroes left, this guy'd be one of them. He scuba dives 83 feet to the bottom of an Arizona lake, and then drops headfirst down a very tight and restrictive mine shaft, bottoming out at an insane 171 feet under water. Then he swims back into the mine, exploring 800 feet of tunnels over six dives. Mad skillz are involved here (cave diving, deep diving and technical diving skills) plus a boatload of guts. Watch it full screen.

I want to do this. I would kill to do this and other dives like this. Now if only my dive buddy would get over his fixation on safety, I'm thinking that we could top this somewhere.

Who dares, wins.

What do you call three lawyers at the bottom of a lake?

No, not "a good start". It's actually a description of what I did today with Aaron of The Shekel and Rob, another lawyer/diver. The three of us went out to Union Lake today for a bit of underwater rest and recreation. Visibility was crummy and water temps were borderline, especially for me, the lone wetsuit diver (the other two had drysuits...sissies.) but it was still just nice to get out and do something to clear the mind after a stressful week.

Here's me.

Since this was an impromptu dive, I had no gear and had to borrow everything but the tank and wetsuit from Aaron. Those items I rented. Since I left my dive leg at home, I just went with one fin and used plastic zip-ties to seal the other leg of the suit.

Snazzy, huh?

Here's Aaron.

No decent shots of Rob, mainly due to the really poor visibility, but here's the next best thing: A crawfish that I caught. He's almost a meal!

Here's me over a sunken boat, one that I suspect an insurance company is probably still looking for.

It even has a copy machine in the stern, but for some reason it wasn't working.

Maybe it needs toner.

Just me again.

And me upside down, with Rob in the background.

A little marine growth, and fish.

And finally it was time to leave.

I suspect that my two-legged friends, having to kick twice as much, were getting tired, so up we went, back to the dry world above, and a microbrewery that Aaron and Rob knew so that we could cap off the day's diving the right way: with beer.

Where is William Randolph Hearst when we need him?

And I need him now, because I want his help riling America up for a war--a WAR!
He did it well back in 1898, beating the drum for war against Spain. He and Joseph Pulitzer used their newspapers to convince America that we should go to war against Spain to avenge the destruction of the USS Maine in Havana harbor and we wound up teaching Spain a thing or two about messing with us.

Well now we have another upstart country that seems to have forgotten it's place in relation to the United States: Canada!

It seems that our "friends" to the north have enacted a new policy (as referenced here) requiring that boats leaving our ports on the Great Lakes to dive on shipwrecks in those lakes must now dock at a Canadian port on the other side of said lake before venturing to any wreck that's allegedly in Canadian waters. This means that wrecks like the Wexford, (blogged previously here) and others which American divers have enjoyed exploring are now essentially off-limits to American-based dive charter boats, because going all the way to some Canadian port-of-entry is just not worth the trouble.

So I say that it's time to remind Canada how things stand. We basically took control of those lakes during the War of 1812 when we swept the British from them quite handily. But being magnanimous in victory, we let the Canadians have access to part of "our" lakes, basically because we're really a nice country. But now they're pulling stuff like this? How quickly they forget. So maybe it's time to remind them again, perhaps by moving a carrier battle fleet onto Lake Huron and basing a Marine Amphibious Assault Transport or two in Buffalo. I mean, what are they going to oppose us with? A couple of fire tugs and an ice breaker at best. We can whoop 'em.

You Canadians had best not think that just because we didn't take Toronto that last time (when it was rather provincially known as "York") that we can't just reach out and take it any time that we want it, and Windsor right along with it! You guys are just lucky that we don't want those cities due to your silly-looking money, that consarned metric system and all that cleanliness ya'll got going on up there.

Still...I would formally advise you Canadians not to push it. Translated into your language: Take off, you hosers. Back away from our lakes and our wrecks and don't make us come up there. If you thought that the Red Wings were tough, just you wait until you meet the rest of us, EH?

Hosed...

So today I'd planned a little scuba dive and I went out to a local quarry that I'd scouted on my last flight. (No, it's not the one pictured. Opsec, you know...) Ninety-five degrees out, and there I was, fighting my way into a wetsuit next to this beautiful crystal clear water. I'd already taken my Sudafed to help my ears clear, and I'd notified my friend Aaron of my location and set a time by which, had he not heard back from me, he was to make the appropriate notifications. Everything was set to go...until I hooked up my regulator and opened the tank valve. HISSSSSSSSSSSS...!

WTF? I'd just had this rig checked out at the local dive shop. What's going on?

All I can tell is that the air is leaking from around the pressure gauge and the leak site is inside the console proper so I can't get at it. All that preparation, and my dive is scrubbed by a bad air hose. @#$%^&!!

But at least someone got wet today.

After I got home and put the gear away, I took Murphy, that late night killer of cats and terrifier of Yankees and UPS men, out to the river. Hey--why should both of us be miserable in the heat, right?

The things I do for this dog...

Our Wreck Diving week-end

As we've done in years' past, Aaron and I got together for some diving and shooting, this time joined on the diving by Amy, a fellow amputee diver from Minnesota.

We went up Friday night and camped it. This could have gone a bit better, but we had some jughead on a nearby site who used his car's headlights to set up his campsite but left them on so long that his battery ran down. Of course he could not and would not wait until morning to get a jump start because he wanted some cigarettes from the store in town. So he found some other jughead with a broken set of jumper cables and they dorked around with it for about an hour before finally getting him running.

Then he got his cigarettes and just sat there all alone in his campsite, drinking beer and smoking. Hell, the fool could have done that at home.

Saturday morning, we headed out to Lake Huron and met up with Captain Gary Venet of Rec and Tec Dive Charters. We stowed our gear aboard his 36-foot boat, the Sylvia Anne, and off we went.

The first dive of the day was on the North Star. It's a 300-foot wooden ship that sank in 90 feet of water following a collision with her sister ship, The Northern Queen, in 1908. We did this one a year ago, but thanks to my then-new dive foot that still had a few bugs in it, that dive was a wash. This time however, it went good. We dropped down on the wreck in ninety feet and checked out the engine and a bit of the hull.




Here's Aaron and me. (I'm the more handsome fellow who only needs one air tank.)

Now I should add that Aaron and I have distinctly different styles and attitudes. I'm aggressive and he's very cautious. He takes safety to the utmost (and for the record, he's right to do so) while I subscribe to the motto: "Who dares, wins." Granted this has gotten me in trouble more than once, but then what's life without a bit of calculated chance to make it interesting? Together we often drive each other nuts. But that's what friends are for.

Our next dive of the day was the tug Mary Alice B., which was sunk--some say deliberately--in 1975.
Here's a shot of the ship's wheel in the pilot house. We were each able to get in there and turn the wheel. Other than the infestation of zebra mussels all over it, this tug looks as if it could be floated and put back into service. It's totally intact and upright in ninety feet.

I also ducked down into the engine room via the open hatch and swam back out through the open skylight, again somewhat irking Aaron. Sorry dude, but I did manage to resist entering the open and inviting hull of the Regina, right?

And on Sunday, we went back to the Regina, a 250-foot steel freighter that was one of eight ships sent to the bottom during the massive storm of November, 1913. She was only discovered in 1986, lying upside down on the bottom in about 75 feet of water.

The last time we dove this, we dropped in on the stern and played around it's massive rudder and propeller. This time, we went down on the bow, landing almost right on her massive port-side anchor, which is still in place. We saw some of the raised lettering of her name, and some very inviting openings in the hull, which I abstained from out of deference to Aaron as I know that he has a thing about just wandering into enclosed spaces. Granted, I was on a single tank with no spare air, had no entry line with me, and my air was running low, so he was right, but it was still damned tempting. I must be getting old. A few years ago I'd have been so in there.

I still ducked inside just a bit though. After all, this is a famous ship, chock full of history, and when adventure beckons, I gotta be me.

Here's Aaron holding an old glass bottle that we found on the wreck. Since it's a preserve, we had to leave it there.

And yes Aaron, I DO kick up a ton of silt. But I'm working on that. And I did surface with just under a thousand pounds of air though, so there was a bit more margin to play with than you gave me credit for in your version of this story.

Finally, we finished up on the wreck of the Eliza Strong. This was originally a 205-foot steamer which burned while under tow with a cargo of white pine in 1904. It was cast adrift and sank in 25-30 feet of water right off of Lexington, Michigan, so close that she was twice dynamited to keep her from being a hazard to other ships. Now it's just 145 feet of decking, spars and other bits and pieces, but lots of fun to just play around.


Here's me and Amy on this one. She's the one with the bright yellow spare air bottle.










The shallow depth of this wreck gives divers lots of bottom time and makes for a refreshing change from the cold temperatures on the other, deeper wrecks. And as a plus, this one's chock full of bass! We had a ball on this one and it was a great wreck to end the trip with.

Now maybe by next time, Aaron and I can work on our pre-dive planning a bit better. He's quite good at diving with other divers, whereas I've always been a solo diver before these trips. He knows a ton of really cool hand signals that I'm sure come in quite handy when communicating with his regular dive partners, but alas, I do not know these signals, so his using them with me is like him trying to play charades with the dog. I just smile and wave back and make the "OK" sign and watch to see what he does next. I was also slow to grasp the concept that one must always stay very close to a "dive buddy"...apparently merely being on the same wreck is not close enough. But I'm working on it.

Oh--and in the "credit where credit is due" department, I have to say that my diving foot, the Rampro Activankle, finally worked well, in marked contrast from previous dives and casual swims. It was tweaked a number of times before getting to this point, but this time I was actually able to swim with the fin extended at a proper swim angle (thus allowing me to allegedly swim away from Aaron, even though he has two feet and should never have been able to let me outdistance him on the Regina) yet I could also lock it into a proper 90-degree angle for walking and was able to do so and exit the water via the boat ladder without assistance for the first time. Fantastic!

Vacation, the next day.

Aaron and I went out scuba diving on Lake Huron. Just as we did last year when we dove the Wexford, we went out with Captain Gary Venet, owner of RecTec Charters, aboard his vessel, the Sylvia Anne.
For me, this was the acid test for my new diving foot prosthetic, the Activankle, made by Rampro.

The foot had already tried to kill me once by coming apart while I was swimming against a current in the Shenandoah River. After some repairs and modifications, it performed admirably well in the river, surviving my best attempts at inducing a malfunction. I was satisfied and confident enough to take it out in the big water.

And at 90 feet below the surface of Lake Huron, amidst the wreckage of the steamer North Star, it tried to kill me again. As I kicked to propel myself along the wreck, the foot and fin that was attached to it suddenly twisted and rotated just like it's literature says that it won't. So I wound up ninety feet underwater trying to troubleshoot this foot and get it to work right. With it twisting freely with every kick, not only was I unable to move in any deliberate direction, but it was also exerting a considerable amount of force on my leg up around the knee so that every kick felt like a vice-grip was locking onto my leg and wrenching it. Add to this the poor visibility on the wreck which limited communication between me and Aaron even more than his interesting hand-signals did (WTF, dude?) and it quickly became a mess. We finally surfaced well away from the upline and dive boat because there was no way that I could get to it, and I had to get reeled in like a big, angry fish. EPIC FAIL, Rampro. If I could have detached this damned foot down on the wreck, it's still be there now. As it is, you'll be getting it back shortly, along with a few choice comments from me to the gibbons and baboons that you've apparently hired to design and assemble these ankles.

The only upside was that Lisa on the boat crew had to shuck down to her swimsuit and come in the water to help me. Silver linings...

The second dive onto the steamer Regina went much better. I ditched the leg and went back to a one-finned dive and it turned out just fine.

Here I am. Handsome fellow, eh?
The Regina was a 300 foot steel freighter that was lost with all hands during the great storm of 1913, a massive storm which took 12 ships to the bottom of the Great Lakes and killed over 250 people. The Regina was lost to history until 1986, when it was discovered upside down but otherwise largely intact on the bottom of Lake Huron.





Here's me again, swimming around the Regina's rudder chain at 70 feet. One of the great mysteries surrounding this wreck came from the fact that bodies of the crew of another ship lost with all hands, the Charles S Price, were found on shore wearing lifejackets from the Regina. For many years it was believed that the two ships must have come together in the storm and either collided, or else the Regina had attempted to aid the crew of the Price by throwing them lifejackets. As there were no survivors from either vessel, it remained a mystery until finally an old man on his deathbed gave away a long-held community secret: When the bodies of the dead sailors had washed ashore, they were stripped of anything valuable by the locals, and then buried. However when it became known that the authorities were diligently searching for the bodies, they were hurriedly dug up and dressed again and presented as having been just found. In their haste to get the bodies dressed again, some of the townsfolk put the wrong lifejacket on at least one body.


And here's me between the blades of the Regina's propeller.
When this wreck was found, much of it's cargo of whiskey was still salvageable. In fact the divers who found it kept the discovery a secret for a few years to enable them to recover some of the cargo and attempt to lay an exclusive claim to it. However all they really managed to do was collapse part of the hull via their rather ham-fisted recovery methods. This is why laws exist to protect wrecks.




And here's Aaron, showing how two-footed people can float.


This was a good dive, despite relatively poor visibility and a fair current across the wreck. Next time I'll be back with better tanks and more air, and we'll see what's inside the hull.

And this is what I look like, swimming with one fin. I make it look easy. I'm that good.

Day #6. Diving the Wexford.

Well here we were--a year later but going out on a charter boat, the Sylvia Anne, owned and piloted by Captain Gary Venet, formerly of Macomb County Sheriff's Dept. (Hell, I knew he was my kind of guy from the first minute I shook his hand.) We motored out of Port Sanilac onto Lake Huron and after about an hour and a half, moored over the bow of the packet freighter Wexford, lost along with her entire crew of 22 during the great storm of 1913.



Undiscovered until 2000, the 250 foot freighter now sits upright and intact in about 80 feet of water and we'd lucked out in that the weather was great and water visibility was fantastic. As Aaron and I dropped down the line onto the bow, I was amazed to see the Wexford's massive steel prow materialize out of the murk. Her anchors still hang in her hawsepipes, and over the bow, her open and empty cargo holds beckon.



As the picture shows, the amidships pilothouse is mostly gone but the hull is complete and intact. On this dive, we entered the forward holds and swam around a bit, making it as far astern as the boilers. Returning to the bow, we exited the water. Our next dive took us down onto the stern and this time we made it forward to the bow and swam in and out of the superstructure and around the boilers before finally ascending to the surface again. It was a great dive on a real piece of history that was only discovered relatively recently. View some other Wexford photos here and here and read the Shekel Blog about our dive here.

(Please note that in his version, he had us arriving at the dock in plenty of time. He neglects to mention that this was only because I took over driving and ran the two-lanes at a more expedient 70-80 mph to make up for his earlier rather sedate 35-40 mph pace.)

Days #3 and #4. Diving!

On both of these days, I went diving with my longtime friend Aaron, the owner of The Shekel blog.

It's been a long time since I was scuba diving. I used to do it once or twice a week, mostly in the swift currents and poor visibility of the icy cold St. Clair River. But that was years ago, and I found out much to my chagrin that I'm rusty and my vintage dive gear's pretty much worn out. (A local dive shop has some of the same gear that I currently use on display in their shop--as antique decorations!) My wetsuit is along ways from being warm any more. One of my regulator second stages leaks bad and my buoyancy compensator has a minor leak too. My tank is so old (manufactured in 1972) that no shop will re-fill it and my vintage gloves are a joke when it comes to keeping hands warm. But none of that gear owes me anything any more, not after years of hard river diving back in the day. I'm going to have to replace almost all of it.

The first day we went down to Portage Quarry in Ohio just for a refresher. Getting to the water's edge on one foot's a bit of a chore, but using the tank as a crutch, I was able to pull it off. I had to point out to Shekel-boy that he was taking so long getting geared up that I was overheating in my suit as I waited for him. He replied that of course it was taking longer as he had to put two fins on instead of one. Touche.

We submerged and went to play with the new Hansa jet airplane that the quarry owners put down there last year. It's a complete jet place, sitting on it's landing gear on the quarry floor in about 50 feet of water with the cargo area doors open for entry. I found out that my weights were both too heavy and poorly placed to accommodate my missing leg, and I was heavy and off-balance, causing me to work much harder than I should have. Adding to this was the initial awkwardness of trying to swim with one foot and fin and a much shorter, finless leg, and I soon began to require more air than I could draw through my old regulator. Realizing that I had a problem, I grabbed Aaron and headed up for the surface. After catching my breath and figuring out what the problems were, we went back down and this time, by taking it slower and focusing on developing a new kick rhythm, I was able to breathe, maintain my buoyancy (somewhat) and enjoy the rest of the time playing around the various cars, boats and other items dumped into the quarry for divers to play with. Regrettably I was too fatigued to try a second dive that day (that one leg deal is a hell of an aerobic workout) but we tried it again in Island Lake Recreation Area's Spring Mill Pond the next day. This time I had less weight and what I had was better positioned to help me with my balance and with the exception of my nearly blowing an ear out due to forgetting to take a Sudafed before diving which made it hard to clear my right ear on descent, it went very well indeed despite a severe storm that passed through while we were under water. (I have to wonder if the park staff there has any idea about how many of their picnic tables are down on the bottom of that silty pond.)

Special thanks to James at Sea the World dive shop (the shop formerly known as Don's Dive Shop back in my day) for the sterling customer service as he helped me get set up with some needed rental gear for our big dive on Day #6.